Former British PM Blair to fight anti-Semitism

Former British prime minister Tony Blair is to take a new role fighting anti-Semitism after stepping down as a Middle East peace envoy, he announced on Thursday.

Blair is to be the chairman of the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation, which campaigns to stop discrimination against Jewish people and for Holocaust denial to be a criminal offence.

Blair and Russian-born Jewish businessman Moshe Kantor announced the appointment with a joint article in newspaper The Times in which they warned of reports of rising anti-Semitism.

"Anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem, but one infecting the whole of society and needs to be tackled for the sake of us all," Blair and Kantor wrote.

"States, international organisations and other actors must join together to tackle hate and intolerance. If we wait for our armies to act, it will be too late."

Blair resigned as an envoy for the Quartet diplomatic group, representing the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia, where he had worked for eight years to help mend the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.